Project X Presents 2 was…

….”a disturbing, lurching assault on the senses” (according to the Birmingham Post!)

They also went on to say “Project X is an intelligent and unique show destabilising the established role of the “spectator” in performance theatre and drawing you into an impressively eclectic and complex mix of art forms”. Nice!

There’s been quite a few reviews/posts about saturday, which i’m most happy to say have all been very positive.

Robin Valk spoke of “Enormous, generous and involved musicianship that jumped boundaries effortlessly” in his commentary

Joanna Geary comments that “the night summed up what Birmingham is capable of when it pulls its cultures and its talent together. It’s something we need to do much more of and it’s great to see people in the city trying to make it happen”
Dr Andy Pryke referred to it as a “multi-faceted box of delights”.

I took some more pictures from the event, and if you type projectxpresents into flickr, you’ll access the entire pool of all the photos (including ones from our first event).

I also videoed a bit of the aurul fight, (whilst spinning around!), and a section of the capoeira.

All this the feedback is really positive for us, as for something that we have worked on collectively for over 12 months, which unfortunatly made a loss financially (thats just the production costs with no-one getting paid btw), this substantiates all our efforts, and indicates that it was all well worth it!

Everyone had to deal with something or another on the show night, and i think most of us would have made changes or improvements somewhere along the line, but on the whole, the show went really well, and everyone involved should feel very proud. My “trial” was having no monitor for about half the set, and there were various sound glitches on one of the speakers (all due to this huge old mixing desk that had to be repaired on thursday night, and constantly rerouted on the saturday according to Justin. Thankfully it didn’t seem to infringe on our audience’s experience, with overwhemingly positive and supportive responses, emails and texts.

Highlights for me personally were the market place happenings led by Kindle Theatre the poets, musicians and capoeira, and our 4 Project X performers expressing a strong narrative throughout the evening. Reg Hunter with a mind blowing set, which was both hilarious, emotional and insightful. The seamless transition into Rich Batsford, who played two very different, but both equally nourishingly soulful sets. I had great fun dancing to Jade One and the funk set, and The Qwalli, and the Aurul fight especially took me deep places inside myself. Dexter played a good solid set, followed by another from Einstellung, and i enjoyed pretty much all of my dj set, despite the various technical trials. Highlights of that for me were, performing and engaging with one of my own tracks at the start, mixing drum n bass into Brian Wilson, into the Prodigy in the middle, and then conducting a live 4 piece string quartet, whilst mixing 3 tracks with an overlayed sample from Howard Marx. The encore was great fun, and the audience were absolutly fantastic. A lorra lorra love in that room, and one magical show.

In honour of all that were part of it, here are the credits, (Which i think are correct, but please let me know if there are any missed off)Well done to all.